Amazon Web Services Slashes Prices - Again

Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the leader in public cloud, it realizes that there are a host of competitors out there.

To that end, it again cut pricing, hoping to stay ahead of the curve.

The latest round -- its 61st overall -- lowered the cost of some EC2 Reserved Instances by a fifth of their original price.

Effective immediately, "Convertible" Reserved Instances, which come in three-year terms and allow customers to switch between different instance types during the duration of their contracts, will cost between 5 and 21 percent less. The discount applies to the C4, M4, R4, I3, P2, X1 and T2 instance families, according to a blog post by AWS evangelist Jeff Barr.

Below is an example of how the discount will affect certain instances:

The company is also launching a "no upfront" payment option for customers that are renting Reserved Instances for three-year terms. Previously, this option -- which allows customers to pay for their Reserved Instances in installments, rather than in-full or with a partial down payment -- was available only for those with one-year contracts. As of Wednesday, however, customers with three-year contracts for C4, M4, R4, I3, P2, X1 and T2 Standard Reserved Instances can begin to take advantage of this installment plan.

"Our customers use multiple strategies to purchase and manage their Reserved Instances. Some prefer to make an upfront payment and earn a bigger discount; some prefer to pay nothing upfront and get a smaller (yet still substantial) discount. In the middle, others are happiest with a partial upfront payment and a discount that falls in between the two other options. In order to meet this wide range of preferences we are adding 3 Year No Upfront Standard Reserved Instances for most of the current generation instance types," Barr said.

In addition, the cost of both one- and three-year contracts for these "no upfront" Reserved Instances will now be anywhere from 9 to 17 percent cheaper. A sampling of how this discount will affect customers is below: